Spree (YA Paranormal) (9 page)

“If I’m not dead, why am I here?” she asked.

“You’re here to stop a killer,” I said.

“What?”

“One of our classmates snapped. He plans to shoot the school at the soccer championship,” I said. “You’ve heard of him. Zipper.”

“Zipper would never do that,” she said.

I tried to call the images I’d seen before, of bodies lying bloodied, of devastated bleachers.

None of it made it through the light protecting Aliya.

“This is a dream, isn’t it?” she asked.

“More like an out-of-body experience,” I said.

Aliya flew up and down, laughed giddily as she flew colorful circles around me.

“Aliya, this is important for you to remember,” I said. “You’re going to wake up again. I know it.”

“Why would I ever want to leave this?” she asked, flying loops around the light.

“Here you’re neither living nor dead.”

“So how do you know you aren’t in a coma?”

“Because I saw my head looking back at me,” I told her.

Aliya slowed down in her flying, landed by me. Her smile vanished. She looked at me.

“You’re not human,” she said. “You’re part mist.”

“Whatever I was like when I died, that’s what I am here,” I told her. “I’m something called a Taker. I take lives.”

“Not mine?” she asked.

“No,” I told her.

Aliya came over and hugged me. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I should’ve been the one driving.”

“I was meant to die,” I told her. “It’s a long story. All I need you to know right now is that you have to tell people what I’ve told you about Zipper. You have to speak until they listen.”

“Who will listen to me?”

“Alex,” I told her, “and Tom and maybe Steph.”

Aliya nodded.

“And Zipper. Try to get through to him before he does what he does.”

“How?”

“Tell him that I’ll save a dance at prom for him,” I said. “Tell him that I was with him, that I heard, that I’ll be there. Tell him that I promise.”

Aliya looked at the swirling black and white mist that was half my body, at the empty eyes.

“I’m not going to see you again, am I?” she asked.

I hugged her.

“Fay, I don’t want you to die,” she said, in between a few sobs.

I kissed Aliya’s forehead.

“It’s too late for that,” I told her. “Besides, they planted a tree. You can visit me there, if it grows. But first, you need to help me. You need to remember what I told you.”

“I’ll try.”

Aliya began to disappear again, fading into the white light.

“Fay,” she called back.

“Yes?”

“What’s the afterlife like?”

“There is a heaven and a hell,” I told her. “There’s just two groups of teens and kids waiting to get to one or the other.”

“Are you going to heaven now?” she asked me.

“That spot goes to you,” I said.

We waved at each other. I smiled faintly at the beautiful light of heaven that Aliya would one day become. Then she vanished.

* * *

Back in her room, Aliya lied perfectly still.

She looked so peaceful for a girl who was flatlining.

Nurses swarmed around her, checking her respiration, her tubes, her injuries to see if there was anything that could be done. I heard them calling for a doctor frantically when nothing worked.

And then, just as quickly as the commotion began, Aliya was there again. I saw her fingers twitch and her ribs rise and fall.

The machines went silent, except for the occasional beep attesting to the fact that life was still there.

The doctor arrived too late, but checked Aliya, probing each wound, determining that she had a crisis but that she was back now and that she should be fine. He assigned a nurse to watch Aliya’s room and Aliya’s room only for the next few hours. That was more than the hospital, skeletal as it was in its staffing, could afford, but the doctor made the attempt anyway. I sensed from the blue and gold orbs circling around in his aura that he had a daughter about her age, that he was reacting as a father as much as he reacted as a physician. I was the happier for it.

When everyone went back to their normal duties, and only one nurse kept watch, ever so briefly, I went up to Aliya’s bed. I looked down at her beautifully curved face, at her closed eyes, at the beads of sweat that formed in her fingers. She was such a beautiful girl to nearly die. I always thought she was too vain, too into her looks, but seeing her aura I realized that she was the best of us all. Preggers always was jealous and hedonistic, and I was always insecure and rebellious. Aliya went along, and maybe that was her greatest sin. But she was still a kind soul. She deserved her life.

I reached down and stroked her hair, gently, the way a mother would. I’d never know what it would be like to be a mother, but I felt protective of my friend.

“Rest, Aliya,” I told her, “but not too long. As soon as you awake, tell your friends. Tell Zipper. Tell everyone…if you remember.”

I enjoyed the moment with my friend until I sensed the blackness of a Taker in the room.

“You’re not taking her,” I told the ghost before he could form.

“We won’t have to,” a voice said.

I recognized the bizarre, uneven pitch that was Crazy T’s voice.

He materialized just enough to point down at Aliya’s folder on the edge of her bed.

I couldn’t grab material things too easily yet, but Crazy T could. He lifted up the folder, stood right next to me. He opened right up to a page where the doctor noted a break in her spinal column. She was being prepped for major surgery, but the prognosis was clear. Aliya would never walk again.

Crazy T smirked, which looked even eerier with his black pit eyes. He threw the papers on the floor.

“It’s your choice,” he said, pointing to Preggers, who hovered around Aliya. “Either your school or your friend.”

Crazy T disappeared, and it was just Preggers and me.

I could hear her voice, whispering to Aliya that she was nothing, that she’d be in a chair for life, that it was my fault, that death was wonderful, that she should come along for a safer ride.

“Be strong,” I told Aliya.

“She will be,” Belinda said.

The Keeper appeared as a blinding, protective light, one not even Preggers could look directly into. Fellow Keepers swarmed around Aliya, showing her images of herself with children, of herself leading a different, but meaningful life. They gave her life; they gave her strength.

Chapter 7

Angry at the attack on Aliya, I lashed out.

The Taker in me gravitated towards the fields, towards the explosives, the deaths that were sure to abound there. The fields were a massive, pulsing black sun calling to all Takers, to all lost souls that fed on fear, death, and hatred.

Even by night the fields were surrounded by Takers, some I hadn’t even seen before. Rope Man was there, a hanging shadow leering out. Burn Girl was there, waiting to stir up new fires, new burns. But there were a group of boys without faces, just shadowy scabs standing guard. I tried to read their auras, but they were too abysmally black. The only picture I could get was of gang wars decades earlier. These were dark sentinels, street soldiers hastening their arrival in hell.

I stood before them, concentrating, seeing if I could picture an explosive, set it off—anything to warn the town. I could feel a small spark of fire forming when I felt a smack that sent me flying clear across the sky.

Crazy T appeared, taller than I’d ever seen him, feeding off of the energy of the Takers. They gave him their hatred, their rage and strength, and he wasn’t about to let a small obstacle like a dead girl stand in the way of hell.

“You just never learn,” he said to me.

“So teach me,” I challenged.

My hatred only fed Crazy T, who grew powerful enough to send me flying from the field. Flocks of Takers fed on me, magnifying my worst fears. I could see bits and pieces of my classmates raining all around me, overcome as I was by endless Taker negativity.

“I gave you this life, and I can take it away,” Crazy T told me.

“You said it yourself,” I told him. “I’m a Taker, and before this is done you’ll see that it’s me who’s come to take you.”

I lunged at Crazy T. He became a tornado of energy, ripping me apart with images of my crying mother, of Aliya, paralyzed, of Steph taking a stone to the head in the explosion and dying before being consumed by fire.

In that moment, as Crazy T came for me, I sensed something behind his anger, something that fueled him. There was a face, a girl, who Crazy T adored. The master was more like his protégé than I imagined. I sensed the girl, now a woman, was still alive, married, and close, and anger towards this fueled Crazy T’s storm of supernatural activity.

I knew she was still in town, still drawing in the manic energy of this lord of Takers. I’d have to find her, find a way for her to come. Her life, with all the others, might be the only way to shock Crazy T, to get him to relinquish some of his power.

Or it may have been what Crazy T counted on all along.

Crazy T sensed my vision and blindsided me with a barrage of dark energy, flinging one nightmare after another until I fell at his feet. I saw my mother dying, broken-hearted, alone, her final thoughts of me as she passed away. I saw Alex turning to promiscuity, getting closer to other women to fill the void he’d never fill in my absence. I stood up, shook off the nightmares.

“They’re untrue,” I said. “You can’t lie to a Taker and expect to get away with it.”

“Can’t I? You really think you know me?” Crazy T asked.

His face became distorted, black, like shadows falling into shadows of greater darkness.

“Bring your friend to me, and I promise you I’ll kill her,” he said. “Just like I will you.”

“You can’t kill what’s already dead.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “Ever feel death coming over you a second time?”

Crazy T started conjuring massive winds of black, the essence of his fellow Takers. The pain I’d caused others, the agony of my head, severed from my body, overtook me, and I knelt for mercy. Just as I fell, Crazy T sent the negative energy right at Zipper until the rage consumed him, propelled him on. The idea was brutal in its simplicity: shoot Alex first.

I regained my strength just enough to fly off, but I wasn’t fast enough. The other Takers surrounded me, until I was forced to join their collective, until I felt that I was losing my spiritual body.

“Consider this your punishment,” Crazy T told me. “You can stay and watch us take souls until you act like a real Taker.”

I fought, but the angrier I became, the more the anger consumed me, the tougher the bonds became. I was trapped, bodiless, in The Flow, and the only emotions I knew how to feel were the very ones that held me in bondage.

* * *

Deep inside The Flow, no Keepers could pull me to safety. I felt surrounded by Takers on all sides, seeing their memories, feeling their emotions, consumed by the same rage. There were no faces, no names, nothing but a collective of negativity. Crazy T had described The Flow as a joining of sense and consciousness. He never mentioned how dark this ghoulish consciousness could be.

I sensed The Flow was a portal, the ultimate force that would drive some teens to heaven and others to hell. But it was dormant at the moment, collecting energy. It would take a huge event to trigger it, to darken enough souls to open the portal to hell. But it was close, and the Takers waiting inside only fueled its negative energy.

“You might as well give up right now,” one voice said. “Once you taste of The Flow, you never leave.”

“Once a Taker, always a Taker,” another told me.

I saw the memories I’d rather forget as I bled my pain into The Flow. There I was, partying away at the age of thirteen, already on my way to alcoholism. I was amazed; I thought I looked so sexy, so fun, so alive. Instead, I was a kid in a t-shirt pouring beer over myself in an effort to appear to be something, someone I was not. To see my tiny, dimpled cheeks, my kid body, still developing, made me sick. If I were to see that same body in a school photo, I’d guess that I was eight, maybe nine, years old. Instead, I was thirteen, and this was the path I’d chosen. The overwhelming drain of wasted life cascaded into The Flow, and I felt weaker, more jaded.

“I wasted my life,” I said.

“Life is a waste,” another voice told me.

“It would’ve been better for your mother if you were never born at all.”

One voice, one Taker, fed off of another, until the negativity was so deep it wrapped itself like a straightjacket around me.

“You were sure ugly,” a voice said.

“Look at you—you were such a loser,” another told me. “And you think those people really liked you for you? You really think they were your friends?”

“You have no friends,” yet another voice said.

I felt crowded by the dark energy until I saw that the energy manifested itself in different places.

There was a party in Burgundy Hill, and the Takers cruised the bodies of the living, looking for any who might be killed that night. I was in the belly of an insatiable force, a dark monster full of voices, all calling out for drink, drugs, sex, or one more day of life to be squandered. Some cried out about how unfair it was that they were there at all, while other voices called them stupid, ugly, or worthless, just like the voices that spoke to me.

There was this one kid at the party, clearly drunk to the point of passing out. He laid in a heap, laughing, then belching, then lying there, his face contorted, like he was suffering from alcohol poisoning. I tried to help, but I was pushed further back into The Flow. The darker Taker energies manifested themselves, one in the form of a lanky pitch black ghost with no eyes and the edge of a smashed bottle in one hand. I sensed this was a boy, once, who died in an alcohol-induced rage, and the Takers in the The Flow were pushing him to egg on the boy, to get him up, to get him violent. Some other drunk kid stumbled over the boy, and the two argued. I saw the boy take a bottle, smash the end of it, just as the Taker urged him to do. He struck the other boy across the cheek until friends came and broke it up. The energy of The Flow grew, then waned as the situation deteriorated.